Greetings, I just joined the forum as I just got in two Mills slot machines. One I bought and the other I need to do some painting for the fellow who bought them from an estate. Both machines were on the floor in a damp basement so the award cards, award card frames, and the base wood are in poor condition. The one I got is an Extaordinary 10¢ which is in better condition of the two.

The paint is poor but the internals are in nice shape and seem to run fine. It had a vendor on the side which is missing. My intentions are to restore the outside but thought I would ask opinions about leaving as is. In my opinion an Extraordinary needs all the help it can get to look attractive. It will be a show piece to sit on one of my restored bank safes. I am a stickler to honor the original design as close as possible. Here are a couple pictures of safes recently done. I am currently finishing up a 1906 National Manganese Money Chest.

A 1891 Mosler Screw Door Bank Safe, extremely rare double door model.

A 1915 Mosler Screw door Bank safe with a 1907 National cash register.

A 1908 Victor Cannonball.

The other Mills is a Lion head 5¢. It is in poor cosmetic condition. The yellow was repainted orange and the black was slopped up which looks like the handy work of the proverbial 3rd grader. It also has a broken edge on one side of the upper front cover. The bottom board is in poor condition. The internals are good. It too had a vendor on it at one time and now has a cover plate at the bottom. The owner wants new paint and the bottom board repaired as best as possible but of coarse doesn't want to spent to much. I feel it is a good candidate for new paint and a light brightening of the exposed metal.

I am capable of high quality work, nothing shoddy done here. Please note, the pictures of the slots were not taken in my shop! I keep mine vacuumed. I will have some follow up questions.

what's with the wood base on the extraordinary? it's smaller than it should be, isn't it? did that come out of a console? i got lots of 'em, but i aint gonna go dig up keys and look inside one of them to figger this out. someone here can answer that question without looking, i would think.

Yes, the front of the wood base on the extraordinary barely sticks out and is original. The rear is broken off and had the two pins in it but only in the rear. It may have been in a cabinet. IDK.

The wood base on the Lion is also broken off in the back but it had two pins front and back. What was the purpose of these pins and did they simply nail in? The rear door is painted as a wood grain. I assume I should leave that alone if original?

The double door a ton? I wish, just over 2 tons. It forced me to buy a fork lift.

sorry, but i gotta tell this story, couldn't resist. i had one of those cannonball safes that was about 5 feet high, as i recall. we were watching the movie "maverick", with mel gibson and james garner, and they had one on a riverboat. it was to hold the money in a satchel for the poker tournament they were having on the boat. it was a very important part in the movie, it showed a close-up of the satchel in the safe,but it was VERY apparent that the safe would never hold a satchel that big. since we owned one, we could see that they had cut the satchel up, and only one end of it could have been in that safe. we had a good laugh over the whole thing, even if everyone else did't get the joke. some also may not know, but the safe had a clock inside the door, so it could only be opened at a certain time, i suppose. and it was made of manganese, if i recall correctly. there are evidently 2 sizes only of those. a very cool safe, and TOP-HEAVY as hell.

The slots have been completed. The lions head took a lot of hours. The bottom board had gotten wet and the glue had started letting loose. The pieces had to be separated, straightened, and glued back together. Painting that design was a PITA, but it turned out nice and the owner was thrilled to see it resurrected.

My extraordinary was in better shape but it still took a lot of time to make the rough aluminum castings look good. I altered the original paint slightly to make it pop a bit more. There doesn't seem to be a "correct" paint scheme for an extraordinary, they all seem to be different. The handle was replated along with the award card frames. The frames were pitted pretty bad so the plating bill hurt a bit, actually, quite a bit. To be honest, my a$$ hurt! But, those pieces make the machine so whatcha gonna do? I'm still debating on changing out the reel strips.

The escalator was giving me problems so I tore it apart and cleaned and tweaked it. it works fine now. I am having some payout issues. 3 coin pays out correctly but skips completely once in a while. 5 coin usually pays out only 4. 10 and 18 also are usually short one coin. I have not disassembled, cleaned, or lubed the main mechanism yet as I thought I would play it some to see what it does. Any suggestions? I am also not quite sure it is interacting with the jack pot correctly.

oldslotman wrote:The upper jackpot pot cover I believe is not correct for that machine. I believe it is from a mills war eagle.

Could very well be. Both these slots had signs of being reworked. I see most extraordinary's have glass there or no opening at all. I did see a couple pictures with a smooth filler cover. Anyone have a inner frame for glass they want to part with?

oldslotman wrote:The upper jackpot pot cover I believe is not correct for that machine. I believe it is from a mills war eagle.

Could very well be. Both these slots had signs of being reworked. I see most extraordinary's have glass there or no opening at all. I did see a couple pictures with a smooth filler cover. Anyone have a inner frame for glass they want to part with?

My first Extraordinary had what must have been a factory cover for the top jackpot, with a flat front, presumably what you describe - and if I recall, pretty much all the parts were there to make it work again if desired. It also had an original filler plate for the gold award mechanism, while the one I have now had the mechanism disabled and the glass painted over - the adhesive in the original two-layered glass has turned dark brown, but the original 1934 strips with gold award symbols and World's Fair references were left on.

There are later casting types that I don't know so well, including ones with no upper jackpot window, just a flat area, as noted - and I think the one window was larger. Then they switched the front from a top and bottom casting, to a full-length outer casting with a separate inner piece, but I don't recall what the jackpot configuration on that was - it may be a version with a lock on the front. The export models had a different top profile and maybe other changes as well, and there might be some other changes that show up in the later machines mostly made for stand-up consoles.

Also, I was looking at my notes from the first Extraordinary I restored, and it looks like it might originally have had what this one appears to have had, an eagle printed on silvered paper in a frame. I've never seen any others, so they must not have held up well.